Archive for June, 2017

So here is the deal. Type 1 fun is something you do that is super fun to be doing. It is fun, brings a lot of joy, usually a lot of laughter and lots of good feelings. An example would be going to a carnival where there are lots of people having lots of fun, smiles around every corner, giggles and laughter and rides and treats and good feelings. It is very clear that you are having fun as well as anyone with you is also clearly having fun.

Type 2 kind of fun is something totally and completely different than that, yet still considered fun. Type 2 fun is work, usually really hard work. It is grinding away at a goal or mission for the sake of the accomplishment. During the activity, there is usually a lot less of what people would consider actual fun. It can be treacherous, hard, miserable, painful, all kinds of unpleasant experiences can happen during Type 2 kind of fun. Exercise is often Type 2 fun.

The yoga classes that I attend are Type 2 kind of fun. Often it is not fun during the process. It is treacherous, hard, moments of absolute misery, pain and very very unpleasant. One of my instructors thinks you should “do something every single day that makes you nauseated because it’s so hard” and that “every yoga class should be a near death experience,” and he doesn’t back down However, big rewards happen because of attending class that drives us to come back for more and more and more.

“That was awful. I hate this place. I’ll be back tomorrow.” -a common thought in a yogi’s mind after finishing a class.

If you have been following this blog or my journey in life, I would give you one wild guess as to the most intense Type 2 kind of fun I have had recently, or actually ever.

The trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro was Type 2 kind of fun. Training was Type 2 fun. Moments of connecting with the rest of the group and going through our days were quite pleasant but the overall trip was so freakin’ intense!

I remember the first day, we all stopped and were taking a little snack and “bathroom” break about 4 hours in and I was standing with a group of about 5 women. One asked “how are you?” The response of the first one she asked was “I’m doing well. I’m making it.” It was asked again and a real similar response to the first.

Then that “how are you?” question got directed at me.

My answer, “I am absolutely miserable. My right shoulder feels like there is a knife stabbing into it and it is progressively getting worse. My feet are the most painful I can ever remember them being and I am hot and sweaty and sticky. NONE OF THIS IS OKAY AND I AM NOT GOING TO PRETEND IT IS!”…and then I started crying.

Of course this was only 4 hours into the first day so I wasn’t going to sob in front of these women I just met but I was an absolute wreck inside.

I had no idea that I would come to a moment similar to that on each one of the next 7 days. This was not fun. In fact there were moments during the trip that I thought to myself “if I am off of work right now, I would much prefer to be doing a fraction of the amount of work I am currently doing. I work so hard all year I could use these next few days and just chill out, why am I even here????”

Commitment to this trip for myself and all of you following the journey kept me in high enough spirits to get through these daily meltdowns.

The good thing about Type 2 fun is it has HUGE PAY-OFFS and I mean HUGE!!! …the real trick is that the fun shows up between 2-4 weeks after the fact BUT then that lasts for a lifetime. Type 1 fun is fun in the moment, but aside from a few incredible memories made within a lifetime, Type 1 fun, although super duper fun, is short-lived.

WHOA Travel, the adventure company that I traveled with for the Kilimanjaro trip, just sumitted their next group on the Solstice last week. I watched their progress through facebook and Instagram and had a chance to relive it a little bit. In fact, I felt nervous for them as though I was trekking that whole path again.

Many have asked me if I have a desire to go back and do it again. Remember what I just said, Type 2 fun shows up a few weeks later…and lasts a LIFETIME!!! If the stars align and something like that trek shows up in my life again, I am the type that will figure out a way to say “yes” if I can. However more than anything else, I am hoping stars are aligning for me in other big ways in my life at this point as I pursue both Type 1 and Type 2 fun.

I don’t know about your life, but every single last second will fill up in my life if I let it. I find myself running here and there and being pulled in all kinds of different directions.

In Moshi, Tanzania relaxing

Also when all the minutes of life are filled up, the days and weeks and months fly by! In fact, it is hard to believe we are working on the second half of June already when it feels like January was yesterday!

Since my training and trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, I have had a lot to accomplish. I always have a lot going on during my weeks of serving the community at my office Cafe of LIFE Chiropractic. But on top of that, I had so many weekends where I needed to travel for work conventions and the other weekends filled with other plans, fun plans, but plans nonetheless. It turned out I was only home 3 weekends out of 3 full months.

Once June rolled around and I was working to plan my month ahead, I decided this was going to be the month to do less. Do less traveling. Do less roaming around this area. Make less plans. Do less with my downtime. And now that we are over half way through this month, I am glad I made that an actual goal.

I have spent a few full days sitting at the lake. I have spent many evenings just relaxing and reading and writing at home. I have opted for longer walks and bike rides from my home rather than making it up to the gym. I have ran less since my foot is still healing from my climb in March (subject of the next blog). I have eaten more meals at home and stayed in to just sit and listen to music. I have successfully done less.

I was considering getting on a plane this coming weekend because I have some new really important people born into the world in the last week but have decided against it. I have had invites to head up north that I have turned down. I did take advantage of one day road trip last week that really filled my soul so I haven’t been totally and completely grounded to Fenton, but in that day we did less than what would have been my norm in the past.

Enjoying the beauty in Traverse City

Since summer break from school is in full force, I have asked many of my patients at the Cafe “What are your summer plans? Any trips coming up?” Many of them have said “Nope, we are mostly just going to be home.” When they respond like that, I almost have a small sigh of relief for them as the school year is so busy that it truly is a time to do less. Especially since the fall sports season pretty much cuts the last month of summer right out, that is just a few weeks away.

My Tuesday mornings used to be spent going up to the gym and taking a step aerobics class and now I am sitting and writing instead. When I say DO LESS, I do not mean with your body or with mine and will follow up this writing slot with a bike ride to get my daily movement. But following that I will sit meditation, if even for just 5 minutes.

Do less. This doesn’t mean do less with your family or do less with your body, it means do less with your time and be more present. Be closer to home, closer to the ones you love and closer to yourself.

I am a doer. I go and go and go and go and go…non-stop…for years. It has been so eye-opening to have a true goal to do less. For many reasons I reevaluated what are the most important things to me and saved my extra time to spend doing those things with specific people and cut the rest out.

After writing and sharing all of that, I want to encourage you to look around your life and find an area or maybe a couple areas that you can do less. I find when I am doing less, I am being more…more centered, more grounded, more peaceful, more rested…less of a human doing and more of a human being, and that makes me really happy.

Many things have crossed my mind over the past 3 months, many, many, many life lessons learned and one of the greatest has been SURRENDER.

In the 10 days that we were on Mt. Kilimanjaro and and traveling to and from Africa, I counted somewhere around a total of 24 hours of sleep. Once I was on the mountain, I averaged around 3 hours of sleep per night.

The dayss would look like this:

The team would come to each tent and wake us up at 6:30am.

We would make it to breakfast at 7 and on the trail around 8.

We would hike for 3-4 hours and stop for lunch. We would hike another 3-4 hours to the next camp so our days were around 6-8 hours of total hiking time.

We would get settled in and they would call us for dinner around 6:30-7pm.

We would get our briefing for the following day, turn our water bladders for our camelbaks in and head back to our tents around 8-8:30.

At this point we were free to go to sleep and that would have been AWESOME if I would have been able to. There is this thing called “high altitude insomnia”. It happens because the heart is beating faster than usual, like it does for exercise, because there is less oxygen. My my mind thought my body was still working out and it is very hard to sleep with my body in that mode.

My usual is I would finally find sleep around 11ish and sleep for about 3 hours and then be up for the rest of the night. This happened every single night. I would lay there frustrated because I knew every minute I wasn’t sleeping was also a minute my body wasn’t truly resting and recuperating from the intense day before and not really able to prepare for the next intense day ahead.

When the team would come by the tent at 6:30am to wake us up again, I would be so beside myself with frustration.

I would get my stuff packed up anyway. I would strap my boots on and get my backpack ready, grab my water and be ready for breakfast no matter what. In the back of my mind I would think to myself, “maybe later tonight I will be able to finally sleep”.

The thing is, I felt miserable inside in those moments. But there are 30 other women maybe feeling just the same or having some other experience just as miserable. It didn’t do me any good to complain to anyone. I would get in this mode of I need to do what needs to be done right now, which was strap my boots on and prepare for the day ahead. Even though it would have felt good to at least express my stress and frustration to the staff, that didn’t matter either because the trail heads in one direction, it isn’t an “out and back”. We start on one trail and continue to another one for the descent. Forward momentum is vital.

It didn’t matter how much I slept that night, or the night before, or the previous 6 nights. It didn’t matter how sore I was, how foggy my head was, nothing mattered but forward momentum and so I knew I better get started.

Endurance, the whole “put your big girl panties on and step forward“ness of this trip was such a powerful lesson in surrender. I had many logical reasons to resist what was happening and most people in that position would have similar self-talk going on about the whole scenario. But pure surrender, strapping on my boots and getting after the task at hand for that day was my only option. There was no turning around, no turning back and only one way to move. FORWARD!

When I equate this to things in my life back home, I see how this lesson has served me so well in the past few months. I have a different view on life. I have spent a lot of my years paddling upstream. I have spent so much time and effort pushing against the current going in the other direction. The past three months I have spent more time setting down my oars, surrendering and allowing myself to be pushed in the direction that life is trying to naturally take me anyway.

I have always had high and lofty goals for my life and I always will. Though I have goals and the “WHAT” I want to accomplish figured out, I don’t have to be so wrapped up in trying to control the “HOW” it all happens. I set some really powerful intentions at the beginning of April this year and life has unfolded more beautifully than I could have ever imagined. I am in shock and awe sometimes knowing that the most powerful move I can make is keep surrendering my own plan for the bigger plan of the Universe.

Maybe surrender in your mind means “to give up”, “to give in” an “to stop progress”. To me, it means to “let go and let God”. It also means to set the goals you want to achieve but surrender to the process of how it all unfolds. Our thoughts about how we want things to be or how we want them to look is usually a limited view of what is really possible. I have been taught this lesson over and over and over.

My action of surrender in the mornings on Mt. Kilimanjaro was the moment I strapped my boots on. From that point I would stand up from the tent, put my arms through the straps of my backpack, embrace the unknown for the day ahead (have no idea exactly what the day would hold, which direction we were going or how long it would take) and start stepping one foot in front of the other.

“Surrender isn’t about being passive, it is about being open.” -Danielle LaPorte

For 8 solid days, this strategy worked and I realized it would work for my life when I got home as well “Have a goal and a destination ahead, surrender to the process of the steps in getting there.” Yet another humbling life lesson and a huge THANK YOU to KILIMANJARO!!!

Most of you know that I grew up with 3 brothers. If I could possibly explain to you my childhood in 3 simple words, I would call it “three against one”. Always…and I was on the losing side of that scenario.

I am not used to being around women for extended periods of time. Of course I have a lot of incredible women in my life, I have personal time with them in doses. The thought of spending and entire 8 days together with 30 other women was an intimidating factor of my trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. However, in retrospect, those 30 women changed my life forever for the good.

I would say probably around a third of the women on this trip had children at home. Women, in general, are naturally helpful and the “mom” energy of the crowd ran strong and deep. If ANYONE, and i mean ANYONE, needed ANYTHING, someone was stepping up to help out, assist others and offer additional supplies. And when I use the word “someone” I am actually talking about 3-5 “someones” because the generosity of this particular group of women was palpable.

We were in this trek together. And when I look out at the broader picture of life, we are ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

I am not one to ask for assistance, I have been able to accomplish a lot in my life on my own. When I am exposed to 8 solid days of really intense activity with such an incredible group of women willing to literally give you the shirt off their backs, it changed me. The consistency of having those 60 extra hands willing to share, give and serve me in the time of need with anything they have to spare…I am forever grateful. I learned from them it is okay to ask for help as I stand shoulder to shoulder with such willing souls to offer help. Of course the culmination of this I wrote about already (click here–>>) “Don’t Die With Your Daypack On”. Such a POWERFUL lesson!!!

I returned to my normal life back in Fenton with a different perspective about asking for assistance.

I know that my willingness to accept help from others has also taken me to a different place as well. I have some amazing friends, a couple specifically I am referring to, that stand shoulder to shoulder with me as I progress through my days. When I ask for help or need assistance with something, their consistent support has continued to help me evolve to a new version of myself.

The picture I have added to the post is not a picture I took, however it is a really good representation of how I view this helpful world now. To have 60 extra hands ready to assist in making this life and world a little bit easier for me, what a gift. I love you Kili Dadas!! Thank you for everything!!!

I am recently reminded in my life about the importance of asking for help and started a blog,“60 EXTRA HANDS”, over a month ago. Now this one is appropriately called “PRELUDE TO 60 EXTRA HANDS”…stay tuned!!

If you have followed my last year of my life, you will be aware of I am currently living in a tiny home waiting for my new home to be built. In this tiny home, I have decided against having any cable TV (no TV in general is how I have lived for years), but because of that coupled with the fact that the internet/cable companies need you to be available on a weekday between 8am-1pm in order to get set up (“ain’t nobody got time for that”), I have never gotten internet here either.

Then a friend of mine presented to me the fact that he lives without wifi, as well as no TV, and I honestly thought to myself “That is even better than just no TV, no wifi either!” I have lived in this tiny home since January and haven’t had much access to computer use. When I am at the office it is just too busy, THANK YOU TO MY INCREDIBLE TEAM!!!, that I don’t get a chance to write there either. So blogging has gone to the wayside.

AND THEN someone said to me “what about making your phone a mobile hotspot?” And that is EXACTLY what I did today and I am so excited it worked!!! I can sit on my couch in my quiet tiny home and start to share my words with you AGAIN and I AM ABSOLUTELY THRILLED IT IS WORKING!!!

So this is a called “PRELUDE TO 60 EXTRA HANDS”and I can tell you this, you won’t want to miss the next blog posts as I have a chance to get back to writing on a regular basis. It is quiet here and peaceful and it is the PERFECT SPACE for blogging. YAY!!!!

“Most of you know that I grew up with 3 brothers. If I could possibly explain to you my childhood in 3 simple words, I would call it “three against one”. Always…and I was on the losing side of that scenario…” stay tuned!!! 🙂